Challenger Financial Services has established its ninth boutique fund manager, which consists of four former members of the Alliance Australian Growth team.
The new firm, called Alphinity Investment Management, will be led by former AllianceBernstein director of Australian Equities Johan Carlberg.
Carlberg will start in August this year, but his colleagues consumer and telecommunications analyst Bruce Smith, financials analyst Andrew Martin and materials and energy analyst Stephane Andre started on Monday.
The four principals left Alliance in May and are majority shareholders in Alphinity.
The Alphinity team expects to assume responsibility for managing three Australian equity funds offered by Challenger, including the Australian Share fund, Australian Select Share fund and the Socially responsive share fund.
Challenger did not want to say how large the mandate to Alphinity was, because it had not been finalised yet, but Alphinity principal Andrew Martin said it was substantial.
"We will be profitable from day one," Martin said. "The good thing about that is that we can focus on managing money."
Martin said it was Challenger who approached the team.
"We had good long term performance and I guess they found that attractive," Martin said.
He said the team has generated 2.8 per cent alpha between 31 December 2004 and 31 March 2010.
Martin expects to add one other member to the team, which is likely to be a quantitative analyst role.
"The creation of Alphinity marks the ongoing evolution of Challenger's multi-boutique model," Challenger joint chief executive funds management Rob Adams said.
"The boutique structure provides investors and investment professionals with a stronger alignment of interests and reduces the key person risks and capacity constraints typical of traditional institutional investment models. We are pleased to welcome another exceptional investment team to the fold," he said.
Challenger's boutique funds includes Ardea Investment Management, Bentham Asset Management, Five Oceans Asset Management, Greencape Capital, Kapstream Capital, Kinetic Investment Partners, Merlon Capital and WaveStone Capital and now Alphinity Investment Management.
